On January 5, 2003, my daughter, Casey Majella Fecko, was
born. More pictures than you can stand are posted at the link above. Pipe Up! is a monthly 'zine edited
by my friend Shannon Manning, with a little help from me. I've got a
sort of a column in the thing, called "Big Rock Candy Mountain." As of
this writing (February 2003), issues one and two are online, including
my contributions --- "Fidel If
It's a Boy, Xena If It's A Girl," and "Your
Name and Deeds Do Not Keep From Shining," respectively. For
subsequent efforts, hit the main link above and click through to the
contents of specific issues. Work In Progress In September 1998, I signed on with my friend Chris Lehmann's
"Cyber-Mentoring Project." Chris teaches English at the Beacon School
here in New York, and through the project he gives his students It works like this: Chris wheedles his friends and associates into serving as mentors, and assigns each of us two or three students. The students put drafts of their written work up on web pages they maintain at school, and we read the drafts and comment on them by email. This lets both students and mentors work according to their own schedules, and lets folks from all over the world get involved in giving these kids a hand. It's a great program. Anyway, when I was preparing a paper for the British Association for American Studies in March, 1999, it occurred to me that I had the opportunity to give my charges a chance to read and respond to one of my works-in-progress, so I put a draft of it up on the web, and gave them the address. While I was at it, I passed on the site address to my students at Brooklyn College, and some friends, family, and colleagues. In the end, I got a tremendous amount of useful feedback. So now, from time to time, I'm going to be repeating the experiment. Every once in a while, I'll be putting up something I'm working on here, and letting people know that they can come take a look and, if they get the urge, pass along a critique. If you've just happened across the site and there's a link to a draft paper below, feel free to do the same.
There is presently no draft on the site.
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the opportunity to get assistance with writing
from adults outside their academic environment.